China eases past Kyrgyzstan in Hangzhou Asiad men's volleyball

HANGZHOU - China eased to a 3-0 victory over Kyrgyzstan in the men's volleyball preliminary round of the 19th Asian Games on Wednesday.

Early in the match, China faced a challenge from their opponents as the score was tied at 11-11, but China managed to enlarge the gap due to Zhang Jingyin's high quality serves, winning the first set 25-19.

Zhang, together with his teammate Li Yongzhen, continued quality serves to help China seal a 25-18 victory in the second set.

China delivered a 6-1 run to start the third set and force Kyrgyzstan to call a timeout. Kyrgyzstan later began to catch up, but China launched aggressive attacks to secure another 25-18 win.

"We had a slow start. We need to further improve our cooperation. I hope we can do better in the following matches," said Zhang, who contributed a team-high 15 points.

"This is our first match at the Hangzhou Asiad. As I hope all players can find their rhythm, I put all of them on the court for rotation," said China's head coach Wu Sheng.

Pakistan crushed Chinese Taipei 3-0 (25-18, 25-20, 25-19). Both teams had 17 points from opponent errors, while Pakistan earned 16 more attacks.

"At the Asian championships (in August) we lost against them. They are a good team, but we have analyzed them and trained especially for them, so we were ready to take them on," said Pakistan's player Murad Jehan.

"We have good blockers and good receivers, and all around we have a good team. So we were ready. We were expecting the result," he added.

Also on Wednesday, Iran thrashed Nepal 3-0, Qatar beat Thailand 3-1, Japan sailed past Indonesia 3-0, the Philippines defeated Afghanistan 3-0, and India edged South Korea 3-2.